In Juliette Manceau's peaceful lair
Discussion with the third A-D of OLOW
Photos par Nina Ducleux
Alongside Mathieu and Valentin, the founders, Juliette Manceau is the 3rd eye in the artistic direction of the collections, and more generally of the brand. For over 5 years now, this seasoned all-round graphic designer has been putting her cheerful stamp everywhere. From our catalogues to our website and, of course, our clothes.
Today she welcomes us to her home, just a few miles from the hushed atmosphere of the OLOW studio in Nantes. A place full of serenity, which she opened to us while she was in the middle of preparing her next exhibition.
The exhibition you are preparing is made up of ink drawings.
Could you tell us about your practice and your experience?
I've always drawn alongside my work as a graphic designer. For 6 years now, I've been organising live model workshops in Nantes, and whenever I can, I fill in sketchbooks of my travels and escapades. Live modelling stimulates my creativity on a daily basis, and it's become a way of keeping in touch with drawing and finding my own style through watercolour and Indian ink.
My artistic practice is spontaneous and intuitive, rooted in observation of everyday life and living things. My favourite tools are brush and ink. My world is built up in black and white, with vivid gestures, sensitive shapes and compositions inspired by the places I travel through. In the workshops I run, I offer a collective, free and accessible approach to drawing.
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
I think I have a strange attachment to notebooks, I accumulate them and to go back into them when you've forgotten them is almost magical, all the memories come flooding back. As well as notebooks, I also love travelogues and unlikely stories. I was lucky enough to travel a lot with my family when I was little, and to see my parents hitchhike back to the campsite at night at the end of a Greek island, I thought that was so rock'n'roll.
A few years ago, I had a revelation when I discovered Baudoin's work in ink. His style is hyper-expressive and raw, and he gives me the simple pleasure of drawing on a daily basis. I also love the crazy watercolour world of Belgian illustrator Brecht Evens, as well as the painter Egon Shiele and the artist Jean Cocteau. I'm also a big fan of pure typography. In the past, I worked for a long time in a publishing house, and I drew my inspiration from graphic designers who mixed art and graphic design, such as Philippe Apeloig, Malte Martin, David Carson or the graphic design collectives (lesgraphiquants, des Signes, trafik...). I liked it when the boundaries disappeared and when it broke visual codes...
In music, I really like indie electro / folk and psychedelic rock with a funk edge, with bands like Guts, Piers faccini, Los Bitchos or Altin gun, Rebeka Warrior, Piers faccini....
In film, I like directors like Gondry, Jeunet, Villeneuve... imaginary worlds, sometimes dystopian, with a retro style that's both very poetic and above all very creative.
What did you do before working for OLOW?
I've moved around quite a bit in France and elsewhere, studying applied art between Lille and Rennes, living in Paris for 6 years where I worked in several communications agencies, publishing houses and art galleries before moving back to the Nantes region. I spent 11 months backpacking across the American continent from the United States to Patagonia. I also did trapeze for 4 years in Nantes in a circus school...
Can you tell us about the ‘Sacred Landscapes’ project?
I produced this series of drawings called ‘Sacred Landscapes’ for a group exhibition at Sauvage and their Art Camp, which runs from 9 to 25 July on the Quiberon peninsula. Three weeks of creative workshops, events and concerts.
"These drawings are fragments of Quiberon, captured between two tides. Done in ink, with a simple, direct line, they tell of moments of calm and pure contemplation. In this series, there are no garish colours, no superfluous elements. I seek to capture the essential, revealed by the contrast of ink and emptiness. Each drawing is a trace, a memory of the landscape, but also an invitation to slow down, to look at things differently: shared memories, suspended in time, inviting us to rediscover a simple, deep connection with the world around us.
